On Dec. 21, 1949 I met "the most beautiful girl in the world." She had been given this title by a trio of entertainment industry luminaries: the German stage director Max Reinhardt; the studio head Louis B. Mayer; and the film director Cecil B. DeMille. I was 10 years old at the time of this meeting, the occasion of which was the premiere of DeMille's Samson and Delilah. By chance my father and I found ourselves seated next to the picture's two stars: Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr (Austrian-born Hedwig Kiesler).

At the moment that i shook her hand I had no idea what the three men had called her, or whether she merited the title. But there was something else far more significant that i didn't know about Hedy Lamarr. She was an inventor; quite an accomplished one. In fact, the lineal descendants of her most important invention are very much in use today.

As a Jewish immigrant who had fled from the Nazis (and an abusive husband), Hedy resolved to do something about Germany's war on Allied shipping that took many civilian lives in 1939 and 1940. She determined to create a guidance system for antisubmarine warfare that could not be jammed and could be accurately directed from ships or planes. To achieve this end Hedy formed a partnership with avant-garde composer George Antheil. He was noted for music utilizing synchronized player pianos and other mechanical devices (including airplane propellers).

The initial result of their collaboration appeared in 1941. It was a technique called frequency hopping. This process used a piano roll-like strip of steel or plastic that had been punctured in a way that allowed frequencies to be changed rapidly and randomly.

The United States Navy didn't put this invention into production until 1963, well after the patent had expired in 1959. However, the patents and their detailed description remained in the Navy's files from which they were available to the developers of the Internet. The basic principles have been employed ever since. Today, for example, they are used in both drones and GPS systems.

It is now obvious what I didn't suspect on that evening in 1949. Hedy Lamarr was much more than "the most beautiful girl in the world."